Book Log 101109

October 11, 2009

Wow, it has been awhile since I put anything here. I think I’ll start again utilizing this blog occasionally — if for nothing else, I’ll use it to log the books I’ve read. I have a bad habit of buying books I’ve already read, primarily because I read enough that they can fake me out the first few pages. I may throw another post in here or there along with the books.

So, to start, I’ll list the last few books I’ve read; it won’t be an exhaustive list since the last time I blogged about books, as I’ve no idea what all should go there. I’ll just start with the ones from this week.

I had never read Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged and decided it was high time — particularly considering the current political trend and the general knowledge I had of Rand’s book. I think there is one key point any reader of Rand can agree on — she was verbose! I won’t go into depth on the ideology and, as mentioned long ago in this blog, I’ll have limited review of the books, but it was an interesting view that, though much simplified, has a hard truth: you can only bleed folks for so long.

Many Americans seem to have a distorted view of how our republic works. They think “the government” should pay for this and “the government” should pay for that. The government has one means of paying for anything, and that’s to take it from those who earn it. So when someone says, for example, “the government should ensure I have availability to good health care” what they mean is “since I haven’t provide the means to pay for my health care, I think the government should take the money by force from those who have earned that money and cover my health care cost.” It’s a viewpoint, I suppose, but folks just need to understand that the money ain’t coming from the government. We are rapidly heading to the point where two families are living next door in the same neighborhood, driving the same brand of car, shopping at the same stores, eating the same food, wearing the same clothes, only one of the two are paying for both families to live at that social level. Eventually the working folks will decided it isn’t worth working, and the Ponzi scheme of socialism will crash.

But I digress.

After Atlas Shrugged, I read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It’s the first book of Gaiman’s I’ve read, and found it pretty interesting. I borrowed it from someone else, along with American Gods (another Gaiman book), in a “loan swap” where I loaned her the first two Dresden books by Jim Butcher.

After finishing Neverwhere, I read John Sanford’s latest Virgil Flowers book; enjoyed it, and have now loaned it to my brother who took it on a trip to Arizona.

I’m currently reading a couple of books. I started American Gods, but was in Barnes & Noble and picked up a few books including Boca Knights by Steven M. Foreman, which I started reading in the bookstore while waiting for SWMBO to finish hitting the mall. So I’m sort’a reading them both at present, and reading two at a time is something I rarely do. Not sure which one I’ll finish first, but I’ll make another post when I complete one or the other.

There are a few things that governments should finance. Otherwise, there is no need for government at all.

Rick said:

I don’t disagree, with the caveat that “government finance” of public service is “public finance.” Not suggesting it’s your view, but too often I hear “the government should pay” where I don’t think the person really realizes it means “working folks should pay.” After all, the government just shuffles our money around, and does so very inefficiently.